A PROFESSIONAL shoplifting gang opened a Pandora’s box when they came North to snatch expensive jewels.

The mob travelled from Hampshire to target three Pandora jewellery shops in two hours.

But their thieving spree has landed the three crooks in a world of trouble after they were caught and locked up.

Newcastle Crown Court heard Martin Waite, Patrick Skeels and Gary Bakes were an organised team who had struck up and down the country.

In the space of 120 minutes they had snatched jewellery worth £20,000 from Pandora outlets in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough.

Judge Simon Hickey, jailing the trio, said: “This case involved the deliberate travelling from the south of England to the North East in order to steal.

“This is high-value property. You are professional shoplifters and you have stolen in the past in the South and have now moved North where you are not known.”

The court heard the three men travelled up to the North East from Hampshire in February this year.

On February 12, at around 11.30am, they went to the Pandora shop in Eldon Square, Newcastle. They stole a 14-carat gold bracelet with charms on it, worth £6,535.

They used a key or some other device to unlock the cabinet containing the jewellery while one of them blocked the view.

At noon they were spotted on camera going through the Tyne Tunnel and by 12.30pm they had arrived, without Waite, at The Bridges shopping centre, in Sunderland. Using the same tactics as before, they stole two bracelets worth £7,000.

By 1.30pm they had moved on to a Pandora shop in Middlesbrough, where they pinched two bracelets worth nearly £6,000.

None of the jewellery has been recovered and they were not arrested for some time, when Skeels and Waite were caught after raiding another Pandora shop in the south.

Christopher Knox, prosecuting, said: “We say this was a planned and well-equipped operation and they achieved the theft of a substantial amount of material.”